Reviews & Commentary

I've bought Dante's Inferno shortly after its release, simply because I needed a hack'n slay fix. To be honest, I regret that purchase. I really don't understand all the high praise this game got.

While it does copy God of War wherever it can, that in itself isn't a bad thing in my opinion, games do that all the time. Sadly, it doesn't offer the same quality as God of War does.

First and foremost, the controls just aren't tight enough. They work and after a bit of time you will be able to pull off some decent moves, but overall it just doesn't feel as if you're directly in control. To me, it often felt like shouting instructions to the guy and waiting for him to do as I say.

The next important thing about a game such as this, level design, isn't that great, either, and often gets pretty atrocious: Camera angles in platforming sequences often make it hard to judge where your character really is in the scene. Jumping forward onto a slowly moving, rather large platform, shouldn't be a gamble. Checkpoints are regularly placed before menial tasks, but not before harder bits. The result of this can be pretty infuriating: For me it's just plain annoying to open several chests and do some very easy platforming time and time again only to die at the following fight.

Presentation-wise the game isn't bad, but not jaw-dropping, either. Often it looks good, sometimes even offers some vistas that are worth the ride, but some of the things that get repeated throughout the game simply look like a PS2 game (the souls swimming in a liquid or the walls "of the damned", for example).

It's a bit sad that they wasted all the potential the idea of the game had. If you really need a hack'n slay and have played all the others out there, just rent it.